Creating New Phases

[charliep]

In 9.1 I'm trying to create a new phase to show a Remodel phase as well as the existing and new builds. I made the new phase in the Project Phase dialog box, but it doesn't show in the Phase Filter dialog box so I can choose the overrides for that phase. The only columns shown are New - Existing - Demo - Temporary, I can't get Remodel to show. Am I missing something or is this another one for the wish list?

[dbaldacchino]

No, it's working correctly. Phase Filters show those 4 "phases", which are relative to the phase set for your view. Let me try illustrate with an example.

Let's say you have Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3. If your view is set to Phase 2, any object you place in that view is by default assigned to Phase 2 (you can change an element's phase if you want). So anything placed in that view is assigned as Created in Phase 2 and is considered "New". Any object placed in Phase 1 is considered "Existing". If an object is created AND demolished in Phase 2, then that's considered Temporary. If an object was created in Phase 1 and Demolished in Phase 2, then that's considered as Demo in Phase 2.

The 4 "phases" that make up a phase filter are a "moving window" and are relative to the phase your view is set to. So if you're now in Phase 3, the object that you created in Phase 2 is now considered Existing. Anything you now demo in Phase 3 is considered Demo and new objects created in Phase 3 are considered New. So basically a phase filter will allow you to show any object created in or before your view's Phase and will also let you override how things are displayed (depending on if they're "New", "Existing", "Temporary" or "Demo").

So basically you can have 100 phases and still use the same phase filter to show a certain combination of object representation in different views....you don't have to create a new phase filter. Remember, those 4 "phases" in the phase filter are just relative. Read through the Revit help on Phasing. It explains this concept pretty good.

[charliep]

Thanks for the explanation David. I have read through the Revit help a few times and worked the tutorials but had difficulty of seeing the concept in reality, (blame overwork, sleep deprivation, old age, the dog, the cat......)your "moving windows" illustration helped. As I understand it, anything I create or assign to my Remodel phase is either new or existing relative to the Remodel phase.

[dbaldacchino]

Haha np. The help wasn't perhaps as clear as I thought. I know I had to read through a couple of times myself. I almost wish that those 4 "phases" would be more interactive. For instance if your current view is set to "Remodel", it would be nice to go to your Phase Filters dialog and see them named according to the phases defined in the project. So they'd be named something like "Before Remodel", "In Remodel", "Temporary Remodel", "Remodel Demo". It would make things more intuitive.

Anything you create or assign to the Remodel phase is NEW in that Phase. Anything you create or assign to phases prior to Remodel is EXISTING to the Remodel Phase. Anything you create and destroy in the Remodel phase is TEMPORARY for the Remodel Phase. Anything you create or assign to phases prior to Remodel and destroy in Remodel is DEMO for the Remodel Phase. Just think of the Phases as pure place holders. The phase filters use those placeholders to determine whether they're "new", "existing", "temporary" or "demo". That's why I said that you can re-use those phase filters in different phases. In fact I don't use the stock filters and have renamed them to make more sense if re-used for other phases. The last thing to learn is simply that a view set to a certain Phase has the potential of showing everything up to that phase (anything created or assigned from that phase back) but nothing created or assigned AFTER that phase. That's why there's no "future" in the phase filter. So if you wanted to show work created AFTER remodel as dashed lines for example, you'd have to create a new Phase "After Remodel", set that as your view's Phase, and then tweak your phase filter to show "NEW" as dashed. Hope this helped a bit more.